The Rhetoric of Modernization and the Labour Government's Pay Agenda

Abstract

The modernization agenda is central to New Labour's desire to improve public services and reforming public sector pay is argued to be a fundamental requirement to delivering such improvement. This article argues that both the modernization agenda and pay reform have a rhetorical function. The authors analyse some short extracts of text from the NHS Agenda for Change on pay reform and show that much of the text requires unstated assumptions and premises to be added by the reader to render the arguments of the text to be fully coherent. Reaction to these unstated aspects of the Government's rhetoric are central to whether modernization is approved of or not.